The nation has its eyes on USC. While the University is caught in the storm assessing every move, it’s time to shift the focus from the press to the very construct of our institutional endowments.

Before dissecting the essential flaws in our current leadership hierarchy, it is important to unpack the roots of our ongoing tensions so the administration and the students are on the same page about the demands for divestment. When the organizing groups such as the Divest from Death Coalition chanted the word “disclose,” they called for endowment transparency. 

This may seem like a simple task since it does not require direct changes to the University’s finances, and it is merely asking for information to be publicized. Nonetheless, many schools choose to reserve these astronomical numbers behind closed doors. 

Financial representatives stated they were unwilling to disclose for the sake of protecting the integrity of their investments; they want to avoid their risks and returns from being skewed by public opinions. So, to prioritize profits and stir away from political pressure, administrations shielded their financial statuses and decision-making processes. 

In this light, not only is divestment difficult to achieve, but even transparency seems far from reach, especially when USC is trying to separate itself from prevalent political disputes, establishing an independent, isolated brand. This idea echoes the mission statement issued by the Board of Trustees, as they insist that they are “unfettered by political control.” However, this statement was adopted in 1993, which casts doubt on whether the outdated principle can still adequately address contemporary crises.

It’s impossible to say our campus is devoid of political discussions when students are consistently engaging in discourse through institutional projects such as the Shoah Foundation and the Center for Advanced Genocide Research. The two centers study survivors’ accounts of historical atrocities and the origins of mass violence. Naturally, they also stimulate conversations about human rights, and this type of exchange should be encouraged. However, when students want to challenge these inquiries through a critical lens outside of these academic spaces, they do not have access to democratic platforms that guarantee freedom of expression. 

Let’s be clear, I am not here to argue that USC’s hierarchical structure is completely ineffective. In fact, as a private university, our administration carries itself differently from how the UC Board of Regents operates, considering that we do not receive the majority of our funding from the government and charge higher tuition, resulting in a complex pool of monetary incomes. 

But, to fix the misalignments between students and the administration, both sides should be more receptive to reimagining shared values. This broadened perspective requires reaching for consensus through bottom-up feedback loops. USC should conduct the following reforms to keep up with the shifting landscapes of the modern world. 

First, the Academic Senate needs to stay updated with its meeting minutes to maintain transparency. The last time this record-keeping documentation was uploaded was in January. Instead of a detailed outline with a Q&A section, the only information about the May 8 meeting is the one-page agenda listing the item “President Folt and Provost Guzman Discussion” with no further details. 

Although the University announced that the meeting resulted in Folt’s censure, we cannot grasp the nuanced debate that resulted in that decision. The thorough explanation of this procedure will allow the public to understand how the representative body finalized judgments about Folt and Guzman.

Second, the Academic Senate needs to expand its demographics beyond the current limited number of seats in their committees. It is currently composed of only 46 voting members, a striking 1% of USC’s total full-time faculty. 

Through a series of Letters to the Editor published by the Daily Trojan and responses on social media, we can see a significant portion of professors strongly sympathized with their students, not just on the cause but also on physical mistreatment and legal punishments against students. The faculty focused USC’s resources on educational initiatives. Now more than ever, we must recognize their social justice-oriented service to our community and allow for their contributions to shine through.

Third, the administration needs to provide thorough justifications for the University’s investments. If we commit to divestments from the fossil fuel industry, the University is not utterly non-negotiable in terms of withdrawing partnerships and leveraging environmental, social and governance standards. So, if the administration collaborated with students for our sustainability cause just a year ago, then they should also comply with their “Investment Stewardship Policy” in the current controversy. 

Last, the University needs to foster an environment that balances the stakeholders and students. We have all heard the saying that students are “never on the wrong side of history.” While this rhetoric may sound naive, I uphold that it is not about picking a side, but rather about writing the historical narrative ourselves. 

The practice of introducing the Los Angeles Police Department and inflicting violence is not new to the University. During the protests against apartheid in South Africa in 1990, USC students encountered similar clashes in their struggles. Yet today, with historical hindsight, we collectively acknowledge corporate social responsibility as a crucial form of self-regulation. 

Learning a tough lesson from the past instances of resisting unethical corporations, we should be consistent with our beliefs and craft codes of conduct by incorporating students’ input. These regulations would devise categories for the businesses we invest in based on their ESG practices, and decide the degree of financial commitment we should devote to each category. This teamwork will minimize conflicts between the different parties of interest and act as an imperative component for USC’s future success. 

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated that the USC Faculty Senate was solely comprised of “established chairs and department heads.” The Senate is comprised of four basic committees which include department heads, faculty who have been recommended to the Provost by the senate to serve and faculty who have self-nominated. The article also stated that “[USC] do[es] not receive governmental funding.” The University does indeed receive various grant and contract funding from the US government. The article was updated June 5 at 5:01 p.m. The Daily Trojan regrets these errors.